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Nine months since OMB issued its 25-point plan to improve how agencies oversee technology, the tone is changing. Lisa Schlosser, the federal deputy CIO, said the goal is to make sure agencies are using their people, money and other resources as best as possible. Agencies are finding some early success with the IT reforms, especially around acquisition.

Given the current budget climates, this is the right focus, but will be met with some resistance by some of the largest defense contractors who will seek to protect the money pits called Legacy Infrastructure. Up to 70% of the annual federal IT budget is consumed by O&M supporting legacy/proprietary IT infrastructure that competes for dwindling IT investments. Agencies must find a way of breaking this lockin to free up limited IT dollars, if they are hoping to provide new services or improve service delivery.
OSD Health Affairs recently proved out one viable approach to legacy lockin, using an automated code modernization technology from TSRI. They proved out the ability to convert millions of lines of MUMPS code for pennies on the dollar.

The commodity IT is definitely an area where monitoring is appropriate, but to listen to every IT manager I have spoken with, you need an IT approval to purchase an Automobile, after all, it has a computer to run many of its functions. Talk about scope creep, What if I want to purchase one of those singing birthday cards...